Nope, Thunderbolt 2 is still 4 lanes of PCIe 2.0, the only difference between v1 and v2 of Thunderbolt is that v2 allows for channel-bonding at the logical level, so you can use those same 4 lanes to connect to a single device, when w/ v1 you were limited to 2 lanes (single channel) per device.Reply

I'm not sure how useful the AVGs are in this case Ryan. Don't you think it would be more informative to give some type of FPS vs. time graph, to show the peaks and valleys in framerate? Or even some type of percentile measurement, giving how much time is spent above certain framerate thresholds. I think I'd be more interested to see if PCIe 2 v 3 results in a significant difference in minimum FPS mainly, because slight dips are going to get lost in a sea of frametimes in an average, but will be very noticeable IRL.Reply

This is one of those cases where I'm just throwing what data I have on the wall. I didn't put much time into the subject since it wasn't possible to get PCIe 3 working on the third slot, so this was all that was collected. It wasn't originally intended for publication.Reply

Not necessarily disagreeing with waiting for Ivy Bridge-E but last I checked the i7-4960X will be six cores..... best not to include them with ultra high spec 12 core xeon's that may or may not be unlockable and even if so will cost an obscene amount. ;)Reply